Jocelyn Robinson
Director of Radio Preservation & Archives at WYSOJocelyn Robinson is a Yellow Springs, Ohio-based educator, media producer, and radio preservationist.
She holds a BA in Art History from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio and a Master’s in Cultural Studies with a concentration in Race, Gender, and Identity from Antioch University. In 2016 she earned a graduate certificate in Public History with a focus on Archives Administration, also from Wright State.
As an educator, Robinson has taught transdisciplinary literature courses incorporating critical cultural theory and her scholarship in self-definition and identity. She also teaches community-based and college-level classes in digital storytelling and narrative journalism.
A Community Voices producer at WYSO since 2013 and an AIR New Voices Scholar in 2014, Robinson's recent audio work has included West Dayton Stories at WYSO, and as an independent producer, contributing to the Goethe-Institut USA podcast, The Big Ponder and WHYY’s The Pulse.
Guiding the growth and development of the WYSO Archives for the past ten years, Robinson has worked to establish the archive’s infrastructure and position WYSO as a national leader in radio preservation. She is skilled in using historical media in content creation, producing Rediscovered Radio, a series of short documentaries using WYSO’s civil rights and Vietnam era audio as source material. With WYSO’s music director Juliet Fromholt, she is co-producer of the Rediscovered Radio “Women in the Archives” podcast, scheduled for a late summer 2023 release.
A member of the African American and Civil Rights Radio Caucus of the Radio Preservation Task Force at the Library of Congress, Robinson is project director of a multi-year effort to conserve and celebrate radio produced at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The HBCU Radio Preservation Project is anticipated to run through 2027 and is generously funded by the Mellon Foundation.
Jocelyn Robinson is a frequent speaker on the subject of radio preservation and has presented at meetings including the Radio Preservation Task Force, the Association of African American Museums, and the National Association of Black Journalists. In 2022 she was recognized with the Society of Ohio Archivists Merit Award, given to “individuals or organizations that have by excellence in deeds, actions, or initiatives improved the state of archives in Ohio over the past year.” She serves on the Third Coast International Audio Festival board of directors.
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In the premier issue of “West Dayton Stories Zine,” producers of WYSO’s popular series “West Dayton Stories”—including amaha sellasie, Tiffany L. Brown, Omopé Carter Daboiku, Love’Yah Stewart, and Jaylon Yates—briefly introduce themselves and give readers useful tips for everything from photography to fashion to gardening. Readers also can scan QR codes that will take them to archived episodes (some of them longer than those that first aired) from the inaugural season of the series. -
In the summer of 1973, César Chávez came to Dayton from the strike lines in Coachella, California to talk about the plight of farm workers. There was a week of activities and WYSO News was right in the middle of it. Rediscovered Radio’s Jocelyn Robinson examined the struggles facing the migrant worker community, then and now.
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Rediscovered Radio Encore reintroduces Florynce Kennedy, an outspoken attorney and activist who bridged the Women’s Liberation and Black Power Movements in the 1960s and 70s, said “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” She was outrageous and defiant and with her middle finger in the air and a cowboy hat on her head, she came to Antioch in 1971 to talk about fighting oppression. WYSO was there.
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WYSO's Jocelyn Robinson reflects on three Black women writers. The words of Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Alice Walker still hold weight today. In this encore edition of Rediscovered Radio, we listen to audio from these intelligent women found in the WYSO Archives.
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Dayton is known for invention and innovation, and there’s a new wave of creative energy coming from the West Side. Young people are making art, with deep commitment to community building and social justice.
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Music’s been a mainstay on WYSO since we began broadcasting more than 60 years ago. In this encore edition of Rediscovered Radio, project producer Jocelyn Robinson takes us back to the 1960s to meet a legendary Yellow Springs disc jockey.
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In 1974, one of the leaders of the American Indian Movement visited Yellow Springs to raise awareness for their cause. The man’s name is Clyde Bellecourt, and a recording of his speech is housed in the archives here at WYSO. Rediscovered Radio project Director Jocelyn Robinson found the audio, and produced this piece.
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The Edgemont Solar Garden on Miami Chapel Road has a long history on Dayton’s West Side. Lately it’s experienced a regeneration of sorts, with partners like Central State University and Agraria in Yellow Springs joining in to support urban agriculture.
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Rediscovered Radio Encore takes a look back to the fall of 1980 when WYSO News aired a story on the National Afro-American Museum project.
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West Dayton residents were without access to healthy foods, to quality fresh fruits and vegetables. But when the community decided to no longer accept the unacceptable, the Gem City Market emerged. And it's so much more than a grocery store.
